The memory of ordinary, everyday intercultural or interreligious relationships, in brief 

Aleppo’s communities – once Jewish, Christian and Muslim, Arabic, Kurdish, Armenian, Greek and Hebrew speaking – encountered each other in all aspects of their lives, and many have seen the city’s historic and global economic importance going hand in hand with its social diversity and cohesion. The bombardment and siege which divided the city from 2012 to 2016 represented a nadir for this multicultural tradition, not because it had failed, but because it was not able to overcome the economic divisions and the political and military powers which became dominant. Although a particular set of understandings of interreligious solidarity were publicly defended by those who fell under the protection of the Assad government – critics may say these were not the determining political doctrines and constitutional realities at work – the city’s division and destruction had been preceded by decades of economic distress, and this had long been exacerbating the social distance across Aleppo’s residents. Throughout this period, Aleppans saw their personal relationships across groups as a part of their civic identity, and the Memory Bank seeks to show how their memories have continuing meaning for them.

The context in which these relationships made a difference at the time

Since the Middle Ages, Aleppo has been one of the most influential economic centres in the Middle East, and the confluence of trade and cultural and religious diversity lies at the heart of its civic identity. Particular sites of religious meaning were of shared interest, as was true of sites in Syria’s other ancient cities. Thus, from late medieval times, outside the gate to the Jewish quarter, there was a stone where Jews, Christians and Muslims made ritual offerings and prayers. The Old City in particular was marked by a very obvious religious diversity, which is recalled by residents as a fact of their lives, but the wider city’s civic identity should also be seen in the light of repeated waves of immigration, adding to the city’s prosperity. The expansion of the city in the second half of the twentieth century brought new suburbs with less prosperous migrants from the countryside in particular. The Memory Bank seeks to draw on their experience of Aleppo’s diversity, just as much as the better known and in some respects better organised intercommunal relationships which marked Old City elite politics and neighbourhood institutions.

What has happened since, which makes the memory valuable 

Communities of Muslim, Christian and Jewish Aleppans live across the world, and the memory of Aleppo’s cross-communal relationships have been important to many of this diaspora. Aleppans who have lived there in recent decades have experienced a city which is in many respects quite different. The personal nature of the relationships of Aleppans of different backgrounds drew some strengths from the dominant political ideologies of the twentieth century, which threw citizens together regardless of background in state institutions, particularly through military service and university education. At the same time, the state’s brand of secularism – drawing in many respects on Ottoman approaches to religious millets – did not seek to foster interreligious or intercultural solidarities at the level of citizens, and this can be seen in the separate pathways of communities which grew up in Aleppo in separate neighborhoods. Even within families the violent break-up of recent times has created trouble. So much the more so between families of different backgrounds. The violence since 2011 has made social memories both of political interest but also a matter that is really important to ordinary people, aware of what it is to be no longer living with the certainties of the traditions of earlier times, nor of the family and interpersonal resources of previous times of their lives. From 2016, after the fighting was concluded, Aleppo has also seen construction to introduce new housing for Iranian and other Shia, and so the nature and meaning of the diversity of the city will change yet again.

How might the memory be used in bringing people together in practice now? 

In light of the brutality of the fighting in Aleppo, there is a temptation to think these memories are sentimental, more than they are of practical use. They mean a lot to many Aleppans displaced from their city, and for that reason they have much more meaning than is suggested by the idea of an unpractical sentimentalism. Beyond that, the ties between Aleppans have often continued through the war, and the Memory Bank seeks to promote more understanding of how these relationships, across religious and cultural difference, have been of continuing value.

 Additional context/Some additional reading

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleppohttps://www.thealeppoproject.com/